A proposal has been made for the federal government to spend $46 billion to hire a million people on a temporary basis in areas including childcare, eldercare, education, public health and housing, construction and maintenance, recreation and the arts. Voters aren’t exactly on board with this idea, as many believe that most of the temporary jobs created would be wasteful projects.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that just 30% favor the federal government hiring one million people on a temporary basis. Just over half (51%) oppose this idea while another 19% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

While most Republicans (71%) and voters not affiliated with either major party (55%) oppose this proposal, 54% of Democrats favor it.

These results come at a time when the Rasmussen Employment Index shows that workers’ perceptions of the labor market have fallen to the lowest level measured in one year. Just 17% of workers report that their firms are hiring while 24% say lay-offs are coming.

If the government hired a million workers, voters fear that most of these temporary jobs would be wasteful “make-work” projects. Most voters (56%) say that outcome is at least somewhat likely that, including 33% who say it’s Very Likely. Taking the opposite view, a third (33%) say it’s not likely the new jobs would be wasteful projects, with just 10% who say it’s Not At All Likely.

The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 29-30, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Rasmussen Reports is a media company specializing in the collection,
publication and distribution of public opinion information.

We conduct public opinion polls on a variety of topics to inform our audience on events
in the news and other topics of interest. To ensure editorial control and independence,
we pay for the polls ourselves and generate revenue through the sale of subscriptions,
sponsorships, and advertising. Nightly polling on politics, business and lifestyle topics
provides the content to update the Rasmussen Reports web site many times each day.
If it's in the news, it's in our polls. Additionally, the data drives a
daily update newsletter and various media outlets
across the country.